It's been widely reported and that makes it fact-esque. - Stephen Colbert

Post 3845 Wherein I Respond to Thomas, Who's Mad at Me, Anti-Impeachment Splitter That I Am

Over at Thomas' place I think I've been put into the anti-Impeachment, retreatist camp. I'm not sure how I got there. Let me be clear - I'm in the Impeachment camp. I carry Impeach signs. I wear Impeach t-shirts. I talk about it to anyone who will listen. I'm thinking about organizing something along the lines of what Thomas did in Takoma Park but it would have to wait until after the November township elections and I'd have to find someone else to take the lead b/c I'm at the end of my commitment rope.

That said, my bloggy self is relieved that this president will not be impeached because I am convinced that
the establishment pushback will be so overwhelming and that the will of the Democrats will be so feeble that when the Senate conviction doesn't come, we'll end up with a vindication of this presidency instead of the ringing condemnation it deserves. The BushCo administration resembles nothing so much as it does a crime syndicate - a crime syndicate backed by some of the richest, most powerful people on the planet, who control the mass media in this country. If we've learned nothing else from gangster movies and figuratively from precocious high school students quoting Nietzsche, certainly we have learned that you don't give people like that a chance to escape. The last thing I want is exactly what I think we'd get from formal impeachment proceedings - a media circus full of lies (during an election year to boot) and an eventual acquittal that will be positioned by establishment forces as a vindication of everything this president has done.

So this is what I want to have happen: I don't operate from the position that the Congress is going to bring this President to justice. They do not have the fortitude, the imagination, the courage or the character to do it or to end the war, for that matter. Those jobs are falling to us. So I want a People's Impeachment (capitalized to give it real heft!) that will convict these criminals in the court of public opinion where the verdict is insulated from the very serious voices of the establishment. I want Overton's Impeachment Window moved. I want polls in favor of impeachment in the 70s - which will only happen as more and more people at the grassroots level push for it. We should keep pushing for impeachment with our friends and neighbors, get towns across the country to officially call for the same, call on Congress to impeach Abu G., make BushCo a laughing stock, weaken him at every opportunity. It's all good. And I want something else - but to get it, I think I'll have to step into the realm of fantasy: I want all the presidential candidates to, at every opportunity, condemn specific steps this president has taken to undermine the Constitution and to pledge to reverse them ALL on his/her first day in office. I am vastly more concerned with their reluctance to do that than I am even with BushCo's persistance on his unconstitutional path. (from BushCo I worry that we'll get another 9/11) The damage he's done can be contained not only by impeachment (which would be my first choice in a reasonable world but is not in this one) but also by immediate repudiation of what he's done over the last two terms by whoever gets elected to succeed him.

Related: I can tell this story now because the person I'm going to be writing about has left his/her position. Right after the 2006 election, I was talking to a district director for a Republican congressperson. S/he mentioned something about impeachment and how "everyone" is talking about it. I was taken aback that s/he'd even mention impeachment but especially so because Nancy Pelosi had just that week or so come out strongly against the idea with her famous "off the table" comment. I asked her what she meant by "everyone is talking about it" since the Democrats had just come out against it and that even Pelosi was against it. S/he said, that she doesn't have access to the inner-workings of the Democratic party but s/he hears the talk - and at that point she gestured to the big window looking out on the street behind us, indicating that everyone on the ground was talking about impeachment - and remember, this was in December of 2006. I had to stop myself from laughing as I said, "Well, certainly, all the people want him impeached. Everyone knows that."

Comments

I would think that the publicity of the case would be bad for the Republican party going into the next election, especially if the Republican senators refuse to convict. There is after all a reason why Nixon chose to resign instead of dragging it out and it wasn't for his sake.

No, no, no, no. It's exactly the opposite b/c the only thing the crooks learned from Watergate is how to avoid paying the price for one's crimes.

1. never back down - NEVER
2. own the media

It's impossible to compare the climate now to the climate during Watergate. Today there wouldn't be publicity, there would be spin and it would all benefit Dear Leader and his crime syndicate. And he wouldn't resign no matter what. The GOP would stick to him like glue, party over country traitors that they are (some Dems would probably also come to his side) and in the end, Congress would get nowhere and it would be another loss for good and a huge, set-in-stone win for evil. (disclaimer: I'm usually wrong about everything)

The more I think about it - and I'm not wrong about this - the candidates for pres MUST come out in opposition to what BushCo has been doing and vow to undo it all on their first day in office. Dodd is making vague noises along those lines. Nobody else is and that's what I find the most disturbing. I don't want these powers in anybody's hands.

Robin - I'm somewhat in the same boat. My biggest concern, by far, is "the will of the Democrats will be so feeble". It has been, it is today, it will be tomorrow. And it appears there is nothing the American people can do to chuck them up. They are what they are, which is, needing to be replaced by bold liberals and progressives that will actually do the people's work.

Having said that, if we had Democrats that had some gumption, we'd have already started impeachment proceedings.

eRobin, I'm sorry. I'm not mad, I was exasperated-to-well-maybe-a-little mad, but as a friend.

Clearly you support the notion that there are impeachable offenses, and that they need to be aired. We part ways only on how far to try to take that -- but that's a significant disagreement.

You join digby, I think, in an overly sophisticated analysis -- one that counsels a kind of activism that would not engage me, I guess: sure, talk about impeachable offenses, but do nothing to test the issue because we might lose. That's not a vision I think many people can get behind -- at least for me, step A implies step B: if you say stuff is impeachable, then you try to impeach.

I'm trying not to be naive about this, but there's an element of prematurely throwing in the towel about your position that I don't think we can afford. As I tried to lay out in a comment during our discussion of the Moyers show on impeachment, I think "winning" and "losing" are open to redefinition. To me, a big win is impeachment, a huge win is conviction -- and a win is even just a substantial majority of Democrats voting for impeachment. A loss is failing to impeach with a majority of Democrats also opposed.

And a huge loss is not even trying. In my view, the Constitution needs "We the People" to actively defend it and demand of our representatives that they do so as well. We may lose, but I think we must try to have the impeachment option of the Constitution actually carried out. Otherwise we risk that part of the Constitution (and others) becoming a dead letter, interesting to historians but of no practical significance any more.

You don't, and you're not the only one. That doesn't mean we're not friends, it just means we disagree.

Hey, Thomas: No apology necessary! I never thought you were really angry - frustrated, sure. And we're all frustrated with this lawless administration. I wanted to be clear that I want them out of power and publicly rebuked so that coming regimes don't go down the same unconstitutional path. We only disagree on how best to do that.

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